Weeksville Wednesdays

In alignment with our commitment to providing a convening place and sanctuary for residents of Central Brooklyn, our doors remain open each Wednesday with extended hours as we host local organizations and Black creatives who are leading community organizing efforts, providing much-needed services, or outlets for artistic expression in our community.

The Weeksville x Ways of Seeing 1: FEMMESTRAVAGANZA has been postponed to Wednesday, March 27th, at 6:30pm.

Film was such a major part of our Weeksville Wednesday programming last year and we are excited to continue this focus on cinematic storytelling with Mariam Kere's Ways of Seeing 1: FEMMESTRAVAGANZA evening of shorts.

Ways of Seeing looks to amplify untapped talent and brilliant visions by young Black and Latina women. Join as was we foster community by allowing us all to see ourselves being recreated, remolded, shifted, explored, and reimagined by the filmmakers in our programs.

FILMS

Boxeador

Boxeador follows Eliona, a Latina from the Bronx, who strives to teach herself to box in order to defend herself from a school bully and reconnect with her father, following the death of her brother in the ring.

Isabel

A young Salvadoran girl is disillusioned with a recent move to the suburbs of New York, where her mother Aracely works too often to spend time with her.

Trapped Freedom

Living amongst their virus stricken community, two siblings work to escape their environment. The secret they carry is enough to alter the condition of their world--or permanently stop them in their tracks.

The Dick Appointment

A glimpse into the world of Jazmyne, a young black girl, sharing a house with her two closest friends. As she waits for her "date", problems arise when unwarranted visitors hinder her night's goal--"getting dick".

BLACK WOMAN

"As the sun sets, my skin is golden, I grip the roots of trees, I am the earth's foundation."

FESTIVAL CURATORS

Mariam Kere is curator and writer hailing from Brownsville, NY. She is passionate about film programming, making, and curating and looks to use that love to showcase the works of Black creatives. She has assisted with programming at Rooftop Film Festival for the 2016 year, and NYC Indie Film Festival for the 2017 year. She ultimately strives to create and help foster a Pan-African film culture that borders the entire diaspora, that truly innovates and thrives internationally. She believes that only through continuing to shift perspectives of Blackness into whole, nuanced, and transgressive depictions can we lean into further celebrations of joy.

Annastasia 'Blake' Utin, is a queer Nigerian-American creative, who hails from the midwest. Having gotten her start by throwing herself into street fashion, Blake is seasoned in curating collaborative events, specifically centered around black and brown creatives. She's ushered major fashion events such as Dress Austin's 'Fashion Night Out', Austin Fashion Week and San Antonio Fashion Week. Some of her most notable works include co-curator of A La Moda, an event featuring QPOC vendors and performers, as well as showcasing as assistant director for 'Think Pink', a fashion event created in support of breast cancer awareness month. In her free time, she sips matcha lattes, and obsesses over cute puppies on IG.

FILMMAKERS

Kati Pérez Jimenez (Boxeador) is an aspiring Latina filmmaker and currently attending Brooklyn College, where she is studying Film Production. In 2012, she shot and directed an eleven-minute documentary, In The Melting Pot. With this documentary, she was accepted into the Tribeca Institute’s 2013 Film Fellows. Since then, Kati Perez has dedicated her work to exploring the Latinx experience within the United States. She looks to showcase Latinx talent and queer experiences within the communities that are often not shown in mainstream media.

Kenia R. Guillen (Isabel) is a filmmaker and visual artist using multimedia to narrate personal stories. Having migrated from rural El Salvador to the suburbs of New York, her work is heavily influenced by the need to heal the sudden separation to family, community, and the highlands. Interested in immortalizing personal and collective memories, she’s currently writing and directing diasporic cinema that calls to perform the ordinary, uneventful, everyday lives of Central Americans. She’s also a co-founder and curator of Tierra Narrative, a multimedia production house dedicated to the creation of new narratives through transnational cultural production between the Central American diaspora and the homelands.

Allegra Earle (Trapped Freedom) is a filmmaker who has worked in both narrative and documentary production. Her experience includes working for Michael Moore and Magnolia Pictures, as well as working as an associate producer for numerous independent projects. Her passion is writing and creating worlds, portraying experiences on screen, and representing the power of perspective and storytelling.

Ja'lisa Arnold (The Dick Appointment)was born and raised on the Southside of Chicago, Ja’Lisa Arnold is an aspiring film and music video director. Ja'Lisa has proudly attained her BFA in Film from Syracuse University. Her most noteworthy project, The Dick Appointment, has landed her into several film circuits, such as the BAMCinematek Film Festival, and garnered awards.

Olufunke Adeniyi (BLACK WOMAN)is an award-winning writer and director, currently pursuing her BFA in Film Production. In 2017, her short film “BLACK WOMAN” received the Best Film Under One Minute award at the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival. “BLACK WOMAN” was later credited by Moving Poems as the best poetry video on the web, and featured in The Respond BC! Exhibit, amongst other international festivals and events. In 2018, her collaboration with Ikan Corporation produced her short film “Ayęyę”, which explored Nigerian spirituality and superstition. “Ayęyę” was screened in film festivals around the world, including the San Mauro International Film Festival of 2018.

In the United States of America, there are 325 million people with different schools of thought, ideologies, and heritage who are all connected by one powerful thing— stories. Our collective stories—whether African-American, Asian-American, Latin-American, Native American, or White—are birthed through our commonality of the human experience.

Your history is my history and Black History is American History.

BRIC is committed to highlighting and amplifying voices from all communities. As part of that commitment and in celebration of Black History, they have partnered with Weeksville Heritage Center, a multidisciplinary museum dedicated to preserving the history of the 19th century African American community of Weeksville, Brooklyn - one of America’s many free black communities.

Celebrate Black History with us at this special screening event highlighting the talented media artists who share their stories on BRIC’s community-produced Brooklyn Free Speech TV & Radio channels.

This event was specially programmed to coincide with Weeksville Heritage Center'sUtopias: Seeking for a City exhibition.

FEATURED FILM & TV ARTISTS

Jon Haggins, GlobeTrotter Jon Haggins TV

Freda Frimpong (Kuumba Media), Gentle Magic

Green City Force, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit committed to building a "green city” built on the principles of sustainability, social, economic, and environmental justice.

Join us for a night of historical fiction on the very land that our story takes place.

The Weeksville Project is a night of storytelling through time and space at Weeksville Heritage Center. Be part of our live audience or listen from home on Bondfire Radio, 7-9pm EST. RSVP below.

We follow a family's patriarch, Cumberland as he arrives to Weeksville from slavery and learn about the developing neighborhood around him and leading to it's eventual end as the borough of Brooklyn blossoms.

Gone are the days of photo albums. Today, its all about Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.

In this workshop, learn tips for preserving precious photographs stored on your social media accounts. Work with our Oral History Manager Obden Mondesir to draft a plan to implement these techniques in order to save personal and family history that lives online. Move with us into the future of archiving!

Ahead of the April 24th opening of her new play "Paradise Blue" at Signature Theatre, join award-winning playwright Dominique Morisseau for a special evening of conversation on art, life and black culture with The New Black Fest’s Keith Josef Adkins